


How Many Roads

by anactoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angelic Grace, Episode: s10e18 Book of the Damned, Gen, M/M, Missing Scene, One-Sided Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 07:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3801409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anactoria/pseuds/anactoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>What is the maddest thing an angel can do? Let himself become a man.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Many Roads

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed splurge of inner monologue; my apologies.

The road ahead ought to be clear.

Metatron has the demon tablet and a head start. Castiel’s wings are broken—but still, Metatron is newly human. He’s never driven a car before, never used public transport or hitched a ride. With his endless prattling—mostly about himself—he won’t be able to avoid drawing attention. Finding him may not be easy, but it won’t be impossible, either.

Castiel should leave now. He should get in his car; follow the road away from this place; ask around in case anybody’s noticed a man who looks far too cheerful for the gunshot wound in his leg. He should swallow his pride and warn Hannah and the other angels.

Something holds him here.

At first, he thinks it must be the grace. _His_ grace. It has been so short a time, in Heavenly terms—not even two years—but it feels like eons since he was fully himself. It’s strange, to feel power sink into the bones of this mortal body, shoot meteor-bright down neural pathways, shine like starlight in his veins—and to know it rightful, unstolen. To let himself be.

But when the fire dims down and he’s left standing in the ruined library, he finds that an absence has lodged itself inside his chest. Frowning, he presses the flat of his hand to his breastbone, over his shirt and tie. 

Yes: this is the place where it aches. Here, where his stolen human heart still beats.

Castiel picks his way through the debris. Books lie scattered, splayed open on the floor, spines cracked. Dean scolds him for leaving books that way when he helps out with research. A roll of the eyes, a, _Dude, were you born in a—you know what, never mind_. Then he’ll mark the pages and close the books, cradle them in his hands with the same affronted care that shows itself whenever Dean feels that his home has been disrespected. It’s Sam who dog-ears pages and scrawls inscrutable notes in margins, stacks priceless volumes in piles so high they topple off the table and shed leaves like the wings of dead moths.

The torn-off corner of a page sticks to Castiel’s shoe. He bends to peel it off and peers at it, frowning. The only words he can make out are _…no longer any God…_ A bloody thumbprint obscures the rest. 

Even Metatron disrespects books, when it serves his purpose. (Bodies and lives, too; but than that is new to none of them.)

At least Metatron _has_ a purpose. His words were intended to rattle and Castiel knows it, but they ring in his ears all the same, give weight and solidity to the absence inside his ribcage.

Since he first felt stolen grace begin to gutter out within him, he has felt the pull toward death. Not a longing, not even really a fear, just a slow, inexorable shift in his center of gravity and the sense of darkness somewhere below. 

Longer even than that, maybe. Since he became human.

Every mission he’s sought out since has been an attempt at a counterweight. Castiel doesn’t know that he has it in him to rage against the dying of the light—but to work, simply and methodically, build a little store of jobs done to set against the darkness? That, he thought he could manage.

Every mission, a little glowing ember. Every mission but one.

He has been without a war before. After the Leviathan, lost in the fog of amnesia and then the labyrinth of his own delusions. After the Fall, puzzling through humanity on the floor of a Gas ‘n’ Sip storeroom late at night. But now—now, he is an angel again, and angels have never understood peace, and when he thinks about that fact for longer than a moment at a time, he feels a terrifying blankness open up beneath him.

Would it still be so, if he were not alone in this?

He thinks of Dean—for the first time today, or the thousandth; he’s never truly sure. The smile he can hear in Dean’s voice when he answers the phone. The creases at the corners of his eyes, where Castiel has sometimes thought about pressing his lips. The sorrow that shadows his face when he thinks nobody is looking.

Castiel fears forgetting these things, sometimes. Day after day passes, and he and Sam talk about Dean and around him, and Castiel can no longer be sure of the last time either one of them looked him honestly in the eyes.

There is no helping that right now. They lie, and they will lie until they find a cure. And then, maybe—then, Dean, too, will be a soldier without a war. One last mission.

When Castiel is honest with himself—and sometimes he is—he knows that there’s a reason he always calls Sam’s number now. Hearing Dean make small-talk about some unrelated hunt, as though it could possibly be more important than saving himself, hearing how his jokes sound more like pleas every day, is hard to bear. It feels like hearing him give up, and in the kind of war Dean is trapped within, there are no conscientious objectors. There is only fighting or lying down for the slaughter.

The thought makes Castiel’s heart clench like a fist. He _feels_ it.

Not just an ember in darkness. Not just a counterweight.

He can still sense the fizz of grace in his nerve endings; still see it when he blinks, like the afterimage of the sun. It won’t let him forget. He is an angel, and angels do not dream of peace. To do so would be—

Castiel comes to a halt. Lets the scrap of paper flutter from his grip and come to rest gently on the floor. 

He finds that he is smiling.

What is the maddest thing an angel can do? Let himself become a man.

The road ahead should be clear, but Castiel puts it behind him. He walks out of the library, leaves Metatron’s riddles in the ruins, and he drives.


End file.
